The Mysteries Of The Bermuda Triangle

Samantha Wang, 8th Grader || 9.30.18

Is the Bermuda Triangle real or not? If it is, is it true that this horrendous place is the cause of close to 1,000 deaths, not including the many aircrafts, ships, and people who are missing? There are many theories to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle and some have to do with the exotic idea of aliens while other theories are as scientific as magnetism.

The Bermuda Triangle is located in the southeastern coast of the United States in the Atlantic Ocean. It covers nearly 500,000 square miles in the vicinities of Bermuda, Miami, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.You may notice that the Bermuda Triangle does in fact make a perfect triangle. You may also wonder about the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle along with its history. In the next few sections, you will find out.

A Brief History

In the past 100 years, Lloyd, an author who is very interested in the Bermuda Triangle, has reported 100 ships and planes missing along with 1,000 lives lost. However, the U.S. Coast Guard reports that the number of incidents in the area was not considered unusual. But Jian J. Quasar, author of Into the Bermuda Triangle states that the number of ships and planes missing is false. According to Lloyd’s records, Quasar says that Lloyd didn’t count in the yachts and charter planes that disappeared; he skipped over the smaller vessels. There should have been at least 300 vessels and planes that are missing or overdue.

The first public disappearance was in 1945 when five Navy avengers disappeared in that area. At first, the Navy noted their disappearance to be “pilot error”. But, the family members of the pilot couldn’t believe the pilots made such a mistake and convinced the Navy to change it to “causes or reasons unknown”.

From 1945, myths of the Bermuda Triangle spread more and more when more planes and ships disappeared mostly reported and summarized by E.V.W. Jones. Two years later, George X. Sand wrote an article for “Fate” magazine called “Sea Mystery at our Back Door” about the mystery of the disappearing planes and ships disappearing at what seemed to be a triangle roughly bordered by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico.

From 1964 and on, “Argosy” magazine accused the Bermuda Triangle to be a fake. But that didn’t stop the myth from spreading. There were many theories ranging from alien abductions to a giant octopus.

Famous Disappearances

During World War 1, the ship called U.S.S. Cyclops (1918) served along the east coast of the United States. On one mission, the Cyclops was supposed to sail to Brazil to refuel some British ships in the south Atlantic. She set out at Rio de Janeiro on February 16 and after a brief stop in Barbados from March 4-5, all 300 passengers and crew disappeared from the world.

Another disappearance was the U.S. Navy Avengers Flight 19 in 1945. Five highly experienced pilots were patrolling when the tower started receiving transmissions that the pilots were lost, the compasses weren’t working and “everything looked wrong.” They were never seen or heard from again.

Plane 680 in 1965 also disappeared without an explanation. It was traveling to Grand Turk Island in the Bahamas. They took off at 7:47 pm but never reached their destination. There was no radio communication problems and everything had seemed fine. A few scrap of debris were found, and that seemed to be tossed out of the plane. There was an expert maintenance crew on board so if there was a problem with the mechanism, there would’ve been plenty of people to fix it. There was never a proper explanation for that incident.

Aliens and Atlantis

There were some theories that were pretty far fetched like alien abductions. The Bermuda Triangle had a high record of sightings of UFOs so there was no wonder people turned to aliens for the blame.

But there was also the theory of Atlantis that was believed to be located underwater of where the Bermuda Triangle is now. Atlantis was rumored to have many technologies that we have today including a death ray weapon that supposedly destroyed even themselves. Mostly, Atlantis was believed to have ran on high energy crystals that were rumored to be extremely powerful. The discovery of an underwater pyramid and a crystal by Dr. Ray Brown in 1970 reinforced this theory. Brown had been scuba diving in the Bahamas when he had claimed to have found a pyramid made of mirror- like stone with a red gem hanging from the apex of one of the rooms. Brown says that the crystal is in an altered state of some kind and it sends out a kind of ray that confuses the navigational instruments of vehicles or disintegrates them completely.

Magnetic Abnormalities

On December 4, 1970, Bruce Gernon, a survivor of the triangle was flying to Miami with his father through the Bermuda Triangle. Entering the triangle, he saw a huge grayish cloud with almost round edges. He reported it to have electronic properties. At 11,500 feet, Gernon thought he had escaped the cloud until he realized that it had formed a tunnel. As they flew over it, the tunnel spread out matching their speed.

Inside that tunnel, they saw lines spinning counterclockwise on the walls of the clouds. In response, their compasses and navigational instruments went haywire.

There was absolutely nothing to see. They could see two miles in front of them but everything was only a dull gray. While Gernon was in the cloud, he contacted Miami Air Traffic Control to get their current location. They told Gernon that he was right above the shore of Miami. But that was impossible. It took 75 minutes to get to Miami from where they started but only 47 minutes had passed.

Sure enough, when the tunnel evaporated wisp by wisp, they were above the shore of Miami! That electronic cloud might have time travel qualities!

Gernon was not the only one to experience this electronic cloud. Other survivors also reported of going through a magnetic tunnel speeding up time. The magnetic cloud that seemed to speed up time.

Freak Weather

The Bermuda Triangle often has freak storms that build up quickly, so fast that surveillance satellites don’t have time to detect them. Without a warning, ships and planes are destroyed because of this.

Also, waterspouts are common. A waterspout is basically a water tornado that pulls water hundreds of feet into the air. This natural force can easily destroy passing ships and planes. Since there is a lot of seismic activity recorded underwater, underwater earthquakes occur often. Scientists have even spotted freak waves hundreds of feet high!

The underground geography/topography is very unstable too. Some continental shelfs suddenly drop down so deep into the deepest trenches that if ships and planes fall into those trenches, they will never be found.

The Gulf Stream where the Triangle is located has very fast waters some places going up to 5 mph easily throwing inexperienced sailors hundreds of miles off course if they don’t act fast. Furthermore, the fast water can easily erase any evidence of disaster making it hard to find disappearing vehicles.

Methane Gas Hydrates

For scientists, methane gas hydrates are the most promising theory in the Bermuda Triangle. Scientists have found large deposits of methane underground mostly from decomposing sea organisms.

Sometimes, chemical reactions happen within the methane gas hydrates causing the whole thing to explode. If a ship is found in the area of such an explosion, the water may become less dense causing the ship to sink underground into the sea floor. For a plane, it would catch on fire and blow up.

Proof for this theory occurs with oil drilling rigs which sink sometimes because of methane gas hydrates.

Pirates

Pirates are also blamed for much of the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. In the past, this theory would not have been true but starting from the 1970s to the 1980s, pirates were found pirating boats and filling them with drugs for shipment.

But from all these theories, people still continue to believe in electronic fog, aliens, and Atlantis. Many others believe in the other theories like freak weather, methane gas hydrates, pirates, and magnetic abnormalities. And as long as these theories are present unsolved, the Bermuda Triangle will continue to be a mystery to everyone. Do you have your own theory?